Doing
What is principaling? Or, in other words, what is it that principals should be doing? Over the last few decades of education reform, this question has been more and more difficult to answer. The role of the principal has exponentially expanded to include responsibilities that did not traditionally fall under the purview or direction of the principal.24 We can argue as to the multitude of reasons why the role has changed over the years, but that will not help us define the current state of principaling in today’s schools. We can, however, identify one main influence contributing to the gradual increase on the workload and responsibilities for principals: the increased accountability legislated into the system from No Child Left Behind (NCLB), and subsequent legislation including the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Simply stated, our educational system prior to NCLB was designed to select, sort and remove students. NCLB ushered in a new era that held the system accountable to ensure that all students were successful, and that students would no longer be sorted out of the system.25 What did that mean for principaling? A massive paradigm shift occurred as principals moved from managers of schools to leaders of systems required to ensure the success of all students.26 What was generally acceptable in terms of school culture, systems, and learning outcomes was no longer permissible. Historically inequitable systems that perpetuated access and opportunity gaps for underserved and underrepresented students required immediate dismantling. Adult-centered systems that contributed to ongoing student failure, chronic absenteeism, high suspension rates, consistently low graduation rates, and institutional racism needed to be addressed in order to meet the requirements of NCLB.27
“It takes time for principals to change a school’s culture, build systems that support the culture, and nurture the ongoing learning of all stakeholders.” This mandated accountability system required new and unprecedented leadership from building principals. They (principals) could no longer just manage, but rather lead. Principals were charged with eliminating achievement gaps which required redefining a school’s culture, the systems that supported that culture, and how learning was defined for all stakeholders. Now, the responsibilities and expectations of principals promulgated by NCLB persist with ESSA.28 What we know about principaling today is that it takes time for principals to change a school’s culture, build systems that support the culture, and nurture the ongoing learning of all stakeholders.29 The process does not happen overnight, nor in the first year. From our work with school leaders, we know a principal new to his or her position invests the first few years establishing trust and building relationships in order to begin shaping the climate, then culture. Once high levels of trust and strong relationships have been built, the principal can then begin dismantling ineffective and/or harmful systems while concurrently creating improved systems that support a new culture. Over time, as the culture grows, and systems support that culture, then the principal tactfully and concurrently pushes on student and adult learning. We refer to this process as leading the convergence of culture, systems and learning. The art of leadership is balancing becoming a leader while guiding this convergence. A more veteran and experienced principal has the ability to accelerate the convergence of these domains concurrently, while a newer principal needs more time and tends to work from culture to systems to learning. Simply stated, culture sets the foundation, systems support the culture, and learning shows the belief. Masterful principaling is accelerating this convergence to impact
student and adult learning as early as possible in the principal’s tenure. By setting culture, developing systems, and fostering the learning of all those they serve, principals create, nurture, and sustain learning organizations.30 But, what specifically is necessary for principals to do this work? In order to fully capture what principals must do to lead learning organizations, we incorporated the National Association of Secondary School Principals’ (NASSP) new publication, Building Ranks: A Comprehensive Framework for Effective School Leaders.31 In Building Ranks, NASSP identified two critical leadership domains: culture and learning. Going further, NASSP broke each leadership domain into different dimensions, then further dissected the dimensions into concrete strategies and action steps for school leaders to consider incorporating into their own leadership.
“Simply stated, culture sets the foundation, systems support the culture, and learning shows the belief.” Overall, Building Ranks provides all principals a solid leadership framework to follow as well as tangible examples from practitioners who are getting the job done in their schools. We highly recommend reading it and keeping it close by as an important resource. However, we diverged from NASSP by adding the third leadership domain of systems to our Paradigm. Our experience supporting principals with their day-to-day challenges of effectively leading and improving their learning organizations’ systems has convinced us that systems is a necessary leadership domain. But even with the addition of the systems domain to the Paradigm, the dimensions and subsequent strategies and action steps outlined in Building Ranks align well to the domains in the Paradigm. With permission from NASSP, we deconstructed the Building Ranks dimensions aligned to the culture and learning domains. Next, we reconstructed those dimensions under our culture, systems, and learning domains. Finally, we included additional dimensions we felt were necessary to complete the Paradigm’s domains. Appendix B provides a deeper dive into the doing side of the Paradigm. A quick reference to the descriptions for the culture, systems, and learning domains and dimensions is on the next page. School Leader Collaborative: School Leader Paradigm | 7
